


Crack the man, crack the vault

by Melime



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Happy Ending, Rescue Missions, Scorpion Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 00:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12971934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime
Summary: When an explosion traps Happy inside the same vault she had been working on, it's up to the team to find a way to open it in time to save her.





	Crack the man, crack the vault

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScribeShan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScribeShan/gifts).
  * Translation into Português brasileiro available: [Decifrar o homem, decifrar o cofre](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13385859) by [Melime GreenLeaf (Melime)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime%20GreenLeaf)



> For Shan. I don't usually go for plotty and action, but your request inspired me to write a rescue, and a rescue requires a dangerous situation. I hope you like it!

Happy squeezed her eyes shut, raising her hand to touch the origin of her throbbing headache. She could feel the viscous wetness of blood from the back of her head, but not much, it wasn’t a serious injury. She sat up, trying to look around, but she couldn’t see anything, couldn’t identify the place. For a moment, she couldn’t remember where she was or how she got there. Then, it all came back, as suddenly as the blast that had send her there.

\---

Toby barely waited for the car to stop before jumping out, running in the direction of the still burning house. One of the firefighters grabbed him before he could rush into the house.

“The house isn’t secure, no one can get in,” the firefighter said.

“My wife is in there! You have to let me through, I have to get to her,” Toby yelled, trying and failing to get past the much larger man.

“Sir, there was no one in there. We searched the entire house, it was empty, no one was hurt,” he said, trying to calm Toby down.

“You don’t understand, I was talking to her when the bomb went off, I know she’s in there!”

“Sir, I assure you…”

“Agent Gallo, Homeland Security, what’s the situation?” Cabe asked when he finally caught up with Toby, the others not long behind him.

Paige placed a comforting hand on Toby’s arm, urging him to stop fighting, with some success. Walter and Sylvester didn’t dare to intervene, they didn’t know how. Toby let go of the firefighter, and gave a step back, willing, for just a moment, to allow Cabe to try to use the proper channels.

“Explosive device, unknown nature. It destroyed half the house, damaged the structure of the other half. It’s not safe to go in. My guys did a sweep of the place, we found no one, no bodies, no signs of anyone injured.”

“She’s there, so that means you weren’t doing your job!” Toby yelled, and Cabe had to hold him to prevent him from jumping the firefighter. “We can’t waste any more time! Happy is in there and she needs our help!”

“Calm down, son, we will, but we can’t just run into a burning building without thinking about it first,” Cabe said, letting go of Toby when he stopped resisting.

Toby took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. He wouldn’t be able to help Happy that way, the stress would impede his judgment, and force the others to dedicate some attention to him while they should all be focusing on saving Happy.

He turned to the firefighter, staring at him intently. “The office past the main bedroom, that’s where she was working. Did you check the office?”

“You said you were on the phone with her when the bomb went off?”

Comms, but Toby wasn’t about to correct him. “Yes.”

The firefighter seemed concerned. “Are you sure she was in the office then? Couldn’t she have moved somewhere else?”

“No, she was giving us the specs on the vault, I’m sure she was in the office.”

“And this was just before the explosion? Did you hear the explosion? Could she have moved somewhere before the explosion?”

“Yes, I heard the explosion, she was still there why are you…” Toby stopped, taking in the nervous behavior of the firefighter since he mentioned the office, his attempts at trying to place Happy anywhere else, his repetitive use of ‘explosion’. “Oh no.”

“Sir, I’m sorry but…”

“You said you didn’t find any signs you injury!” Toby yelled accusatory.

“The office was completely destroyed, I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean destroyed?” Cabe asked.

“There’s nothing left, that entire side of the house is gone.”

Toby grabbed Walter’s arm to keep himself from falling. “Gone?”

“The only thing left standing is that vault, but we checked it for heat signatures, and didn’t get anything. I’m sorry.”

“Wait, you said the vault is still there?” Walter asked.

“You don’t think…?” Toby asked.

Sylvester thought about it for a second, running the numbers in his head. “Extrapolating from the specifications Happy had send us and from the damage caused to the house, the vault could withstand the explosion without significant damage. It would also prevent the reading of any heat signature from within the vault, as well as X-Ray reading or any equipment we have here.”

“Happy would know that, she must have realized she wouldn’t have enough time to get to a safe distance and just got in the vault,” Toby said excitedly. “Now all we have to do is go in and get her out of there.”

“The vault had to be closed to protect her, and if it was sealed she would only have,” Sylvester paused for a fraction of a second, “assuming she didn’t panic, Happy only has thirty seven minutes of air left.”

“She won’t panic, this is Happy we’re talking about, she’ll know she has to keep calm to preserve air,” Toby said, more to himself.

“Happy was the only one with the password,” Walter said.

“Can’t we just call the client and ask for the password?” Cabe asked.

“He’s in a bunker somewhere in the Californian desert, incommunicable and we can’t find him in time,” Walter said.

“Are you telling me neither one of you geniuses saw the card with the password that Mr. Penhall left with us?” Paige asked.

“It was sticking out of the folder, only the last two digits were visible, 41,” Walter said.

“The password has sixteen digits, that still leaves us with a hundred trillion combinations. Even if we bypassed the vault’s keyboard and attacked the system directly, we couldn’t force it to run all possible combinations in time,” Sylvester supplied.

“Which is why we have to find another way,” Paige said, before Toby could panic again.

“We are wasting time here, we need to see the vault,” Walter said.

\---

It was a simple job. The client wanted to find a way to move a vault made to withstand a nuclear blast without destroying his house in the process. It was easy money pleasing a paranoid billionaire, and he wouldn’t even be around while they worked. She was just there getting the specs on the vault so Sylvester could check if it could be moved without bringing the house down. That was the problem with building a house around a vault and then deciding you didn’t want it there anymore, but she wouldn’t point that out, Paige told her not to antagonize the clients.

She went alone, and that was the only reason why she noticed anything. In the silence of the empty house, any noise would stand out. She didn’t notice it when she opened the vault, the heavy door mechanism was enough to cover it, but as she scanned and measured the vault, the distinctive clicking noise made itself clear.

Happy opened the closet just to satisfy her curiosity, she didn’t expect to see a bomb there, counting down, only ten seconds left.

“This is not good,” she said, turning to look for a solution.

“What happened?” Toby asked over the comm.

There was no time to run, at least not run away. She ran to the vault, pulling the door down. She didn’t even have the time to properly close it before the explosion, the blast sealing the door shut and pushing her back, knocking her unconscious. As soon as the door was sealed, her comms stopped working, and she only had a limited supply of air.

\---

“It’s no use, we can’t bypass the system this fast,” Walter said.

“Happy has three minutes of air left, we won’t make it,” said Sylvester.

“Yes, you will, because that’s Happy in there and we won’t leave her!” Paige said.

“No, we won’t,” Toby said, realization striking him.

“Toby, there’s still time…” Paige started, comforting.

“No, there’s not. We’ve been going at this all wrong. We can’t test a hundred trillion combinations, but we don’t have to. We know Penhall knew his password by heart because he was paranoid, he wouldn’t just keep the combination written somewhere.”

“So what you’re saying is…” Paige said.

“We don’t have to crack the vault, we have to crack the man,” Toby said. “Walter, Sly, I need everything you can find on Penhall. Where he was raised, what was his locker number at school, anything numeric or that can be turned into numbers.”

“How will you know which number is relevant?” Paige asked.

“I need to think, give me everything you have, I need something to work with.”

Walter and Sylvester kept feeding him numbers, attached to random points in Penhall’s life. It was too much, there was no way he could find the common thread, not before it was too late.

“Wait,” Toby said, “what was the last one?”

“October 7th, 1941, birthday of his mother,” Sylvester repeated.

“It’s what he said in the garage. He looked at the folder and mentioned that he always cared about his two daughters, his wife and his mother, and that he wanted to keep them safe. He must have seen the combination and thought about them. What are their birth years?”

“1997, 1991, 1968, 1941.”

Toby ran to type the numbers. Knowing the last date, it was easy to presume they went from latest to earliest. The screen flashed green, and the vault’s door began to open.

“Yes!”

“Wait, Toby, it’s nine minutes past the deadline.”

“What?” He didn’t wait for the door to fully open, rushing inside.

Happy was lying there, immobile. Then Toby noticed the head wound.

“She hit her head, if she was unconscious she would need less air,” he said, mostly to himself. He checked her breathing, faint, but still there. “We need oxygen!’

“I’ll get a medic,” Cabe said, running out the door.

“Come on, Happy, don’t do this to me,” Toby pleaded.

The paramedics came in with an oxygen mask, and it took Happy only seconds to wake up.

“Doc?”

He hugged her, taking care not to dislodge the mask. “Next time you think of locking yourself in a vault, please remember to give us the combination,” he said, going for a joke to try to keep his emotions in check. He pulled away, but took one of her hands in his.

“Will keep that in mind,” she replied.

“We have to take her to the hospital to be checked out,” one of the paramedics said.

Toby nodded. “I’m coming with her.”

Toby held her hand the entire way to the hospital, refusing to let go. He had almost lost her that day, he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight.


End file.
